run hot
by hiyoris-scarf
Summary: This was the most upset Leorio had ever seen him—so it was with no small degree of self-loathing that he found himself thinking how nice it was to have Kurapika cling to him. To pretend, for once, this was something that could happen again under better circumstances.


"You're shivering."

Leorio's comment barely penetrated the fog around Kurapika. He looked up, bleary with fatigue. The vacant suffering written on his face wrung a knot in Leorio's chest. He doubted Kurapika himself even realized how hard he was shaking.

Rather than pressing an investigation, he shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around Kurapika. It might not add much in the way of warmth, but at the very least it gave him the opening to briefly rest his hands on Kurapika's narrow shoulders. He felt the shudders that wracked his friend's overtaxed body: strengthening, subsiding, an ocean's worth of grief rolling through his bones.

"Are you warm enough?" Leorio asked. Less because he thought Kurapika was actually cold, and more to draw words out of him. A smothering, dreadful weight burrowed between them, making its nest in the silence.

Then Kurapika's fingers dug into the jacket draped around his shoulders. He blinked slowly, looking at Leorio—_through_ him, actually, into an invisible distance. Whatever he saw there tore straight through the dense cloud surrounding him. Every muscle seemed to liquefy, and Kurapika sagged downward.

Leorio reached for him in panic, hauling him upright.

"Hey!" His voice came out sharper than he meant. "What is it? Where does it hurt—?"

Kurapika's mouth opened, and Leorio clamped his own firmly shut against an avalanche of questions and concerns.

"It doesn't."

His voice was so quiet, the words barely reached Leorio's ears.

"What doesn't?" he asked.

Kurapika hesitated a moment before answering. His lips trembled.

"It doesn't hurt."

He gazed up at Leorio then, and for a long heartbeat his face was so hauntingly young, and fragile, and bewildered, that Leorio could have cried.

"Shouldn't it?" Kurapika whispered. "It should hurt."

Leorio would never want anything in his life so badly as he wanted to say the perfect thing. He wanted to explain how this had been good. How it was fortunate, after all, that Kurapika's vengeance had been stolen from him, and how, now that the evil he had hunted for so long was crushed, he could focus on the reclamation of his family. He wanted to say anything but the truth. He grasped for any safe, comforting words, no matter how false they rang.

But Leorio was not eloquent, nor was he a liar, and this is what he said.

"It will."

Kurapika sucked in a tight, pained breath, half-gasp, half-sob. His teeth were chattering so hard that Leorio heard them echo in his skull. He had to press his arms hard against his sides, holding himself in a stiff, unnatural posture, to keep from gathering Kurapika in his arms.

"I don't know," Kurapika muttered. His eyes slid away from Leorio's, drifting out of focus. "Right now, it's almost a relief. It's strange, Leorio…I've chased revenge for so long, and now that it's gone, I…"

He swallowed, hugging himself. Leorio bit the inside of his cheek, and waited.

"I don't enjoy killing. I'm not like that. But I thought I could accomplish something by making the Troupe pay back what they took, drop for drop. I thought I was serving a higher purpose than my own revenge. And I thought that—that it was somehow poetic justice that it had to be _me_—"

Kurapika lurched, his chest heaving with dry, rattling sobs. Leorio was there before he could fall, holding him up and murmuring nonsense. This was the most upset Leorio had ever seen him—so it was with no small degree of self-loathing that he found himself thinking how nice it was to have Kurapika cling to him. To pretend, for once, this was something that could happen again under better circumstances.

"You're freezing."

It was hardly an exaggeration. Leorio cupped the back of Kurapika's neck with one hand, felt the cold radiating from his skin. He hesitated.

Kurapika's fists tightened in his shirt, and Leorio exhaled, very, very slowly. He brushed the hair aside, covered the back of Kurapika's icy neck with one large hand.

Kurapika hissed. Leorio half expected steam to rise from the point where their skin made contact.

"What are you _made_ of?" Kurapika asked, squirming. Leorio's lips twitched.

"Sorry. I run hot."

Kurapika sighed; it was so quiet, a barely discernible displacement of breath against Leorio's chest. He still shook, but the tortured, rolling convulsions had gentled into mild tremors.

Leorio shifted, but Kurapika's hands in his shirt locked tight.

"Do you mind if…?"

Leorio blinked. Kurapika's voice was odd: not in pain, not angry. He had never heard him sound so vulnerable before, and he only realized after hearing that request again—years later, in a different place, with new and wonderful meaning—that the yearning ache in his chest was an answer.

He could not understand that now.

Instead, he wrapped both arms tight around Kurapika, warm enough for two, and melted the chill from their hungry bones.


End file.
